‘The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ Is Still Bravo’s Darkest Reality Show

More than any other Real Housewives franchise, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills feels like it has 20 years’ worth of events happening in the year between each new season airing. Since Season 12 of RHOBH, Kyle Richards has had a continuously rocky relationship with her sister Kathy Hilton, after the latter’s tirades comprised most of last season’s drama; longtime Housewife and shit-stirrer extraordinaire Lisa Rinna chose not to renew her contract; Erika Jayne won her legal battle against colleagues of her fraudster ex Tom Girardi; and Kyle and her husband Mauricio Umansky have announced their separation amongst rumors that Kyle and musician Morgan Wade have entered a hot-and-heavy lesbian fling.

That’s really only scratching the surface, and because the fragments of glass from the spectacular car crash that was the drama of last season are still glistening across the freshly tarred roads of Beverly Hills, the RHOBH cast has to spend a minute picking up each piece. The Season 13 premiere is largely spent rehashing the past, but unlike other Housewives franchises with timid season starters, that hardly spells disaster for Beverly Hills. The cast, producers, and editors are clearly planting the seeds for an event-filled season. It might just take a second for that harvest to kick off.

Season 13 opens with news of Kyle and Mauricio’s separation, which broke back in July. Unfortunately, that little taste is all that audiences will get for the time being, given that this season began filming closer to the top of 2023. Before any sources could come forward with news of their split, Kyle and her Mau first had to keep falling out in front of the cameras long enough to get a sufficient amount of usable material. Though we’ll have to wait for that to unfold, Kyle makes it patently clear by the end of the premiere that her marriage is shakier than ever.

And she’s not the only cast member having trouble with her significant other, either. Dorit Kemsley and her husband PK have hit a few bumps too—and I don’t just mean their kitchen floor that’s coated in Lay’s potato chips from PK’s hidden stash, which Dorit chides him for eating in the premiere. After their 2021 home invasion, Dorit continues to suffer from PTSD, which would make their dynamic all the more difficult as it is, if Erika Jayne wasn’t criticizing them at BravoCon 2022 to boot. (Erika told the audience at a Watch What Happens Live taping during the convention weekend that she thought Dorit and PK would be the next RHOBH couple to call it quits.)

Erika spends a good chunk of the premiere atoning for her sins before resigning to her old, flashy Erika Jayne persona. She’s setting the tone for a season where she’s too fatigued to be remorseful after—hmm, counting on two hands here—seven-ish months of showing regret over her lack of empathy toward the victims of her ex-husband’s fraudulent crimes. Dorit, on the other hand, seems ready for a season of battling it out with her.

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When Erika defends her remarks at BravoCon by saying that she’s “a showman” who was just delivering a line and giving people what they want, Dorit fires back in her confessional. “Standing up, going to the center stage, delivering the line, and then flipping her hair?” Dorit ponders, mocking Erika’s milk-throated vocal tone. “That’s not a showman, that’s a bitch!” She says the last word with such an overdramatic, breathy shock that I was certain if we see this Dorit coming to play for the rest of the season, we’ll undoubtedly be in a great spot.

Meanwhile, despite her lack of contrition, Erika seems more than ready to bat for herself this year. She’s back in fighting spirit, with a newly minted hourglass figure thanks to “some great hormones.” (“Is ‘hormones’ spelled ‘O-Z-E-M-P-I-C?’” Dorit questions in a confessional; surely, the Dorit-Erika dynamic will be one to watch this season). When Erika walks into the cast’s first gathering of the season, Kyle deems her “the Incredibly Shrinking Woman,” to which fellow cast member Crystal Kung Minkoff responds, “I want to be the Incredibly Shrinking Woman!” A dark remark, given Crystal’s candid talk about her history with disordered eating over the past two seasons.

That’s one of the things that’s always surprising about Real Housewives of Beverly Hills: how easily they can chill us to the bone. Sure, there’s plenty of glamor in this famous zip code, but there’s also a grave darkness. With more money comes higher stakes; the dissolution of a marriage means that millions of dollars of assets could turn two former lovebirds into total monsters. The limelight of Hollywood peering over the hills keeps everyone hyper-concerned about their appearance and weight to concerning degrees. And, of course, the happiness of a family unit is always at risk. We’ll see that later this season when Garcelle Beauvais’s son asks to live full-time with his father, and when Kyle sits down with her family to have an earth-shattering talk about the status of her relationship with Mauricio.

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With so much at stake, there needs to be someone who’s both willing to call bullshit and give the pot a good stir whenever it might need it. In Beverly Hills, that person is Sutton Stracke, who will happily waltz into any scene ready to spill a rumor or hold someone’s feet to the fire. Sutton has become an integral cast member for RHOBH, earning her diamond several times over. Without her, we’d still be stuck relitigating what happened with Lucy Lucy Apple Juicy after Dorit rehomed the poor dog in Season 9. And though Stracke isn’t directly involved in any of the premiere drama, her solo scenes with BFF Jennifer Tilly are the most fun moments of the first episode.

The premiere closes with a tense, strange scene between Kyle and Mauricio, in which Kyle chastises her husband for always being away. But you know what they say: When the cat’s away, the mice will play… with tattooed country-music-singers! Though Kyle’s friendship with Morgan Wade isn’t discussed in the first episode of Season 13, her new set of tattoos are. We already know that Kyle will later be adding Morgan’s initials to her collection of ink, but Kyle isn’t phased by anyone’s suspicions. “I’m at a point in my life where I don’t have to explain anything to anybody anymore, including you,” she says to Mauricio during their chat, as the credits begin to roll. Let’s just hope that Kyle isn’t lumping the viewers of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in on that sentiment, and we can expect a season that will heat up in no time.

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